The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  Moody Shay turned this over in his mind for a long moment, and in it he saw the safety he craved, the revenge he wanted visited on Fry, and future prosperity in his line-up with a smarter man than Noble Fry.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s a deal. But I’d like to get going as quick as I could. I’d like to be on the other side of these mountains by daylight.”

  “Wait till I saddle up,” Ambler said, “and I’ll help you get the stuff strung out on the trail. You’re a smart man, Moody, and I can make it worth your while to tie up with me.”

  “I always did figger you for a smart man, yourself,” Moody answered. “The kind I like to do business with.” He got to his feet, then said, “By the way, I reckon I’d better have a fresh horse.”

  “Can do,” Ambler answered, and started for his horse. With his face hidden from Shay, he permitted himself a smile as he thought, “Imagine that damned fool coming and throwing me a hole card like that, right in my lap, too. Well, I’ll keep him under cover till I have to use him to knock Mister Fry off the limb, then I’m going to have to close his mouth quick. His loose mouth is too dangerous.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Pot Boils Over

  Moody Shay pushed the stolen forty head of mixed whitefaces and polled shorthorns up the brushy trail that led over the gap in Ashfork Ridge. In the darkness and because of the thickness of the brush alongside the trail, the young stock was easy to control, and it did not matter much to him if a few of them got away.

  Despite the soreness of his body, Shay’s mood had improved after he and Ambler had got the herd lined out, for ideas were coming to him.

  He had a thick packet of money in his pocket, how much he didn’t know, for he had not had the chance to count it. And he had forty head of stock that would bring a good price in Deerlick. This stock would never see Ambler’s feeder ranch, but would go directly to the pens at the commission house, and Moody would pocket a nice addition to his already thick roll. He had to laugh at Ambler, who thought he was a smart man. He had just agreed to everything Ambler had said, and had flattered him a little, and Ambler had handed him a nice herd which would help him on his way to some part of the country where there was not anybody looking for him with a rope. Fry and Ambler! They considered themselves smart men! Moody Shay laughed until his cracked lips hurt him.

  It was getting light when he made the cut at the top of the ridge where the trail began its downward thrust towards Deerlick. He stopped his horse to blow him, and to survey the hillside sloping down towards Deer-lick and freedom. And it was while he was stopped that he heard the voice.

  “All right, Shay, just hold everything.”

  Moody Shay froze in his saddle, then tightened his muscles preparatory to spurring the horse forward as he looked for the owner of the voice. Then he settled his weight back into the seat of the saddle, and the blood in his veins ran cold with an onslaught of his newfound fear.

  The voice was the voice of Noble Fry, but Fry was hidden from him, and he did not know which way to turn to run him down or to escape from him. And in his uncertainty, he did nothing, while the calves he was driving meandered downward on the trail towards Deerlick.

  It was still a darkish grey dawn, and in the bad light Shay could not see the man he now wished he had finished killing.

  “What do you want, Fry?” His eyes were still searching frantically for the man.

  “I want you to put your hands on your saddle horn and keep them there while we have a little talk, Moody. Put ’em on there!”

  Moody Shay cupped his two hands on his saddle horn, and then he heard the brush rustle and Noble Fry stepped out into the path about ten feet ahead of him. Fry had him covered with a rifle. Fry was bareheaded, and the hair on the side of his head was matted with dried blood.

  “Just a little talk, Moody. Just a little information I want.”

  Moody gulped and said, “Listen, Fry, I told you I had to get out of the country, and you wouldn’t believe me. I had to have the money and you wouldn’t give it to me. You’d have done the same thing if you’d been in my fix, now wouldn’t you? Besides, I didn’t hit you any harder than I had to. You won’t hold that against me, will you?”

  “That depends, Moody, that depends. Like I said, I wanted to have a little talk with you before you left the country.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “That wasn’t hard. I just figured you wouldn’t go to your own place, but that you’d probably want to get patched up and get a fresh horse. Ambler was about the only man in the direction of the mountains that you might get one from, so I ambled over to Ambler’s just to ask him if he’d seen you. Imagine my surprise, Moody, when I bumped into you and him riding together out towards that box canyon. I didn’t know you two was friends, so I followed. And surprise on surprise, you and him broke this little herd out and started them up this way. I’d never thought about Ambler as a thief, so I thought I’d just trail along till you got out of earshot—”

  “You mean gunshot—”

  “Call it gunshot. Anyway, tell me something, Moody. How long has this been going on?”

  “I don’t know a thing about Ambler,” Moody said. “I said I was going over the mountain, and he offered to pay me to drive these calves to his other place. You don’t mean they’re stolen.”

  “Poor Moody, you’ll never grow up, will you? I’m afraid I’m going to have to look on that whack you gave me on the head as right unfriendly. I want to know how long you and Ambler have been rustling sleepers off this creek bottom. And don’t tell me you don’t know that mixed herd is sleepers. You and I both recognize the blood lines of my stuff, and Churchill’s and Sterling’s and Woodbine’s. Moody, do you want to sell some information in exchange for your own worthless life?”

  “I don’t know a thing, Fry. Honest!”

  “Honest!” Fry mocked. He was in a rising humor now with Shay under the muzzle of his gun. “Honest, I’m sorry to have to kill you, but after all, if you don’t know anything, there’s not much reason for waiting.”

  “Look,” Moody said, sweat breaking out on his forehead and running salty down the lacerations on his face. “Look, Fry, don’t hold it against me. I’ll tell you about Ambler. Sure, he’s been picking up sleepers, and I’ve picked up a few that I’ve bumped into and sold ’em to him. I drove maybe six little bunches down to his other place.”

  “What other place?”

  “He’s got a feeder lot at Deerlick, under the name of the Deerlick Cattle Company. People there think he’s a big rancher up here, and cattle buyer, so they’re not surprised when odd brands show up on his lot, vented, of course, and with sales papers. I’m going to hide out down there till this blows over. Then I was intending to come back and get in touch with you.”

  “That’s nice, Moody, mighty nice. But I can’t afford to have you running loose around the country. Your tongue starts wagging as soon as you get scared, and it seems that you get scared pretty easy now since Woodbine worked you over. No, Moody, you ain’t going to Deerlick.”

  “Look here,” Moody said with a trace of hysteria in his voice. “Don’t do it, Noble. I done your killing for you. I’ll do more. I’ll leave this stock here and go back and finish off Woodbine for you. I’ll take care of anybody you don’t like, only don’t do nothing you’ll be sorry for.”

  “Sorry, Moody, but you’re not safe. Back there I thought I was going to torture you just as you like to torture people, but it’s not worth it. I don’t like it. It’s just a job that has to be done.”

  He pulled the trigger of his rifle and a spot on Moody Shay’s shirt front danced slightly and a puff of dust blossomed from it. Moody made some kind of sound with his voice and wobbled in the saddle. He clutched the horn tighter with his two hands, but they slid loose and he fell sideways to the ground as his horse bolted.

  As Moody Shay lay writhing on the ground, Fry lea
ned his rifle against a tree and went to him. Squatting beside the wounded man, he asked, “Where’s that money you stole from me?”

  Shay did not answer him, and Fry turned the man over on his back. He was in the act of putting his hand into Shay’s pocket when he heard the unmistakable sounds of galloping horses.

  He stepped back from Shay quickly, his mind flooded with a swift panic at the sounds. Shay was still alive, and he might live to tell his story. Fry measured the distance back to his rifle against the sound of approaching hoofs, then as he looked at Shay speculatively, he saw his own stolen pistol in Shay’s belt.

  He took the pistol and shot Moody Shay through the head with it, then stepped back just as the first horsemen in the group came into sight up the trail. They were Burnham and Woodbine, and behind them Fry saw Race Greer and several other townsmen. He stood and waited their approach, framing his story swiftly.

  As Woodbine and Burnham dismounted, Fry’s mind raced over the details of the story he would tell. He could not claim the money now, for he feared that ownership of it might tie him in with Ambler and the stolen cattle.

  Merle Roberson, knowing the strained relations between the other two ranchmen and Fry, acted as spokesman. “What happened, Noble?”

  “I finally caught up with Moody,” Fry said. “I’d been suspecting him of dipping into my herd for quite a while, and so I’d had him working for me so I could keep an eye on him. He came by the place tonight, changed horses, and left out. I followed him, saw him pick up a little herd of calves at his corral, that he’d evidently been collecting one at a time, and head this way. I circled him and waited for him here, so I could catch him with the goods. Well, we had some words, and then a little shooting, and there he is. I’ve done the neighborhood a favor, I’d say.”

  Merle Roberson chose his words carefully. “I guess you’ve saved us a nasty job.”

  “You wanted him?” Fry asked with a show of surprise on his face. “What for?”

  “We just wanted to talk to him about killing Ab Sterling. Looks like he did it.”

  Fry clucked. “The dirty skunk. Well, that settles him.”

  “Now that you’ve killed him, what are you going to do with him?” Roberson asked.

  “Far as I’m concerned, he can lie right there. Damned if I’m going to do any work burying him after him stealing from me.”

  Woodbine was sitting on his bootheels over the body of Shay. “We’ll take him on down to where we can get some tools and bury him,” he said without looking at Fry. “I’d kind of like to look over the stuff he was driving over the ridge.”

  Fry stuck the pistol in his belt and went over and got his rifle. “I’ll be going on, if you boys are taking over.”

  Roberson nodded, and went over and looked at Shay’s body, while Noble Fry went into the woods, got his horse and rode back down the hill.

  Woodbine was examining the wound in Shay’s head and the one in the chest. He looked at Bob significantly a long moment, then got to his feet. “We might as well see what else is around. I wonder where his horse is?”

  They found the horse which had run a hundred feet or so and stopped to graze. Woodbine came up to the animal, patted his nose and caught him up. He turned to old Bob who had followed him. “Ever see that horse before?”

  “Not Moody’s,” Bob answered.

  “No. That’s Moody’s saddle, but the horse belongs to Hugh Ambler. It’s not Ambler’s regular saddle horse, but he’s brought it along to round-ups.”

  “Sure, I remember now,” Bob said, and examined the horse again. “Moody could have stolen it.”

  “Ask somebody to look for the stock he was driving.”

  Race Greer and a couple of other men went down the trail on the far side of the gap and came back after a while with a string of about thirty yearlings and calves, and they all examined them.

  “About every brand along the creek on them,” Woodbine said, “and a few from brands away from the bottom. All vented to a D in a C. Wonder whose brand that is?”

  “We’ll drive them down to my place and hold them till we can get them all back to their owners,” Woodbine suggested. “We’d better get Moody loaded on to his horse.”

  Woodbine, on a sudden impulse, squatted and went through Moody’s pockets. He brought out the big roll of bills that Moody had taken from Fry’s safe. Bob whistled, and Merle Roberson reached out and took the money and examined it. “Two thousand dollars,” he said after he had counted the money. “I’ll put it in my safe for the time.”

  They got Moody’s body tied on to his horse, and got the young cattle strung out and headed back down the mountainside. Woodbine, Bob Burnham and Merle brought up the rear.

  “What do you think all this means?” Merle asked.

  “It’s just scrambled things up fine,” Woodbine said. “I never saw one thing tangle up things in general so much as this does.”

  “Why?” Bob asked. “It gets one man out of the picture.”

  “And brings another one in,” Woodbine answered. “It leaves new questions scattered all over the mountain.”

  “Yeah,” Bob admitted. “Like, why should Moody have suddenly got hold of one of Ambler’s horses, unless he stole it. And where did he get that roll of money?”

  “I can answer that one,” Merle Roberson said. “It’s still got the blue band on it that the bank put on it. I had that money in my safe, and I cashed a check for Fry with it. Fry’s safe being open, Moody could have stolen it from him.”

  “In that case, why didn’t Fry mention that Moody had robbed him? He might have not wanted to claim that money for some reason.”

  “It may have been because he murdered Moody to keep his mouth shut. Moody was shot twice, but once with the rifle and once with that pistol Fry had in his hand. The two bullet holes are not the same size. And if you remember, there was a space of time between those two shots. In my book that reads that Fry shot Moody and wounded him, maybe to get his money back, and then when he heard our horses he shot him again to be sure he was dead enough not to contradict any story Fry told. I told Shay that I know who hired him to kill Ab, figuring he’d make a bee-line to whoever it was, either to tip him off or to jump him for revealing the killing. It looks like Shay might have done just that. The money ties ’em up together, all right, but it still don’t prove that Fry hired Shay to kill Ab.”

  “And the horse ties Moody to Ambler,” Roberson speculated, “but it doesn’t tie Ambler to Fry, and we still don’t know for sure that it was Moody who actually stole those calves. This thing gets worse every time you discover something new.”

  “It does show us that all is not sweetness and light on this range,” Woodbine said dryly. “I started out to do a simple job of fencing a piece of land. I haven’t even got started fencing yet, and the further along I get the more it looks like I’m going to have to fence out more than cattle before we have any peace.”

  They reached a fork in the trail, and Woodbine pulled his horse up short. “Look,” he said, pointing to the trail that turned to the right. “Those calves came from that way. That trail leads to the ford across the creek and on to Ambler’s place. They didn’t come from around Moody’s, as Fry claimed they did.”

  The other two men pulled up with him, verified the fact of the hoofprints, and made their comments.

  “I’m going to see where that stock has been kept hid,” Woodbine said. “You all take Moody’s body down to my house and get Doc Ellis to check on those two wounds and save the bullets if he finds them in the body. Throw the stock into my lower corral. I’ll be along as soon as I see where this trail leads.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Business Deal!

  Woodbine had no difficulty back-tracking the herd of calves, and by nine o’clock he had crossed the creek and followed the trail to the corral in a wooded section on Ambler’s land where the calves had been
held while their original brands had been vented and the new ones healed. Now the corral gate was open and the corral empty, and thus there was nothing to tie Ambler to the stolen cattle except the tracks leading from this hiding place.

  Woodbine was satisfied enough now that Ambler had been in the rustling with Moody Shay, and that Noble Fry, who could have got this information out of Shay before shooting him, had grabbed on to it and told it in order to divert any suspicion from himself. Ordinarily such information would have been a satisfactory excuse for Fry shooting Shay. But to Woodbine, it didn’t add up to the complete answer, because of Fry’s having failed to mention his missing money. It suddenly came to Woodbine that the reason for this might have been that this was money that Shay got from Fry either as payment for killing Ab, or as an extortion to keep it secret.

  Woodbine went over the whole confused set of facts again, saw that his conjectures made sense, but that they were only conjectures, and were not sufficient evidence to confront Fry with.

  And while he was sitting his horse before the empty corral, trying to piece things together, Hugh Ambler rode up.

  Ambler pulled up before him, and in his taciturn way, he waited for Woodbine to speak. Woodbine said, “Howdy. I was just riding around looking for strays.”

  “You thought maybe I might be holding some of your stuff in my corral?” Ambler asked.

  “You’re asking that question kind of bluntly, aren’t you? What’s the matter? Nervous about something?” Ambler’s smile was cold. “Why should I be nervous about anything? I’m always interested in people riding around over my ground. I’ve got stock running on it.”